A thought by John Townsend from his
book, People Fuel (p. 19). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book
title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)
Do you know this? He is!
John says, “God is, at his essence,
about love: ‘We know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever
lives in love lives in God, and God in them’ (1 John 4:16). And since love
requires relationship, God is highly invested in relationships. He wants
relationship with us, and he wants us to have relationships with each other.”
John goes on, “Needs bring us
together, into relationship. Think about the opposite situation, a person
living in a self-sufficient and isolated manner, say, someone who lives away
from others in the wilderness, surviving on his own without a supportive
community, a loner who insists on not being dependent on anything or anyone.
While we might admire his strength, we don’t tend to make him a model for the
whole and successful life.
“At the same time, we have a loner
part of ourselves as well, which has difficulty feeling and expressing our
needs. I call it the sourcer-sourcee conflict.”
John says, “We feel much more
comfortable in the role of sourcer than in the role of sourcee. The sourcer is
the one providing for, helping, assisting, and supporting another—being the
need meeter. The sourcee is the one who needs the help.”
Why is that? One reason is, “Feeling weak. For some people, saying, ‘I need something from you’ doesn’t make
them feel strong and stable. Instead they feel weak, helpless, incomplete. My
response: Weakness is a normal and good part of life. We all go through weak
times, sometimes several times a day. There is nothing wrong with that, if the
need is getting met and it’s strengthening you to face the demands of reality.
Feeling bad about weakness makes about as much sense as feeling bad about
taking golf lessons because your swing is weak.”
Another one is, “Feeling selfish. At times people feel that asking for something is
making a self-centered move. They should be more giving, so they don’t ask at
all. My response: Certainly we aren’t to be self-centered. But putting gas in
your tank isn’t selfish. It’s a way to make yourself useful and productive.”
Still another one, “Trust issues. Some people, unfortunately, have had painful relationships in which
they learned that trusting and being vulnerable to someone important caused
them hurt and rejection. Their response is to either isolate from others or
become a consummate giver because that prevents them from ever having to be
vulnerable again. My response: Don’t let the actions of one hurtful person keep
you from all the great relationships God has for you. You will need to work
through the hurt and stop projecting that person’s qualities onto humanity in
general.”
After listing many others, John says, “God
meets our needs from two directions: ‘vertically,’ through prayer, the Bible,
the Holy Spirit, the spiritual disciplines, and surrender; and ‘horizontally,’
through people. We need both sources. In some way, we do not fully understand,
God set up a system in which he alone (the vertical) is not enough. That system
without the horizontal is, according to the Bible, ‘not good’ (Gen. 2:18).
Yes,
it easier to be the one who others come to, to be the one who is the sourcer. But God also wants us to reach out to Him and
to others with our needs? You do see, don’t
you that He also wants us to be a sourcee even though it is easy?
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